THE world could not understand Christ, but He knew the world thoroughly. He was ever mixing with everybody, but always Himself, and never of the world; and we are by rights as much strangers in it as He was. Flesh and Satan and the world always go together; but He was ever drawing round Him everything that was of God, and judging all that was not. If you were a great man you would get a good place in an inn; if you were a little man you would get a little place; but He got no place at all. Has your soul got the thorough conviction that you have none either, and that all you have to do in it is to overcome?
“Even if we do not cling to the world, how it clings to us! But if Christ had His place, it could not. If it were last night that the Lord Jesus had been put to death by the world, would any of us be ‘hail fellow well met’ with it? What matters it whether it was last night or 1800 years ago? Some are insisting on belonging to this world and to Christ too. I say you are wonderful people if you can! Christ could not. All. I do is to get through it as earnestly and as fast as ever I can.” J. B. S.